The Coalition has consistently called on the City and the State to make full use of every available affordable housing resource to combat homelessness and alleviate the suffering of our most vulnerable neighbors. As we explained in our State of the Homeless 2017 report, one step the City could take immediately and unilaterally – without even impacting the budget – is to increase the number of NYCHA public housing placements for homeless families to 3,000 per year (please sign our petition here).

In an article for The Nation, Jarrett Murphy summarized the various structural factors and policies that have contributed to record homelessness, and emphasized the need for more permanent housing to address the crisis.

“Since the Great Recession, this has become a different and deeper problem because it’s more and more an economic problem,” de Blasio said in February. “Working people becoming homeless; families in record numbers ending up in shelter; people who don’t have any mental-health challenges or substance-abuse challenges, never been incarcerated, still ending up in shelter—that’s what we’re seeing more and more—that’s a more fundamental structural problem.”

The statistics speak for themselves. Over the 14 years before de Blasio took power, median rents in the city went up 19 percent while real incomes fell 6.3 percent. Republican-engineered deregulation sucked some 150,000 apartments out of the rent-stabilization system from 1994 to 2012. And half a million New Yorkers now shoulder rent burdens that are considered unsustainable. It ain’t rocket science. What the homeless need is housing.

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But for a plan triggered by the continued growth of the city’s shelter census, de Blasio’s program only aims to reduce the shelter population by 2,500 over five years—basically to where it was by mid-2015. It makes no provision at all for moving more people to permanent housing than de Blasio was already moving.

It remains unclear how many apartments created through the mayor’s 10-year, 200,000-unit, $41 billion housing plan will still be set aside for homeless families. The 176,000-apartment public-housing system, where thousands of units turnover each year, will still only offer 1,800 units to people coming out of shelters. The same goes for Section 8 vouchers. His LINC program of rent subsidies will continue at the same level.

It’s simply not enough. “At this critical juncture, the principal focus of City and State homeless policy must be on rapidly reducing the need for shelters by bringing permanent housing solutions for families and individuals to scale,” the Coalition for the Homeless said in an annual report released shortly after the mayor’s new plan.

Other Links

Today’s Read: Homeless New Yorkers Are Spending More Time in Shelters Than Ever Before

A record 63,839 people, including 22,938 children, sleep in NYC...Read more

Today’s Read: Members of New York’s Congressional Delegation Call on Cuomo to Back Program to Fight Homelessness

With State budget negotiations in their final weeks, a growing...Read more

Today’s Read: This Program Could Boost the Fight Against Homelessness

As Albany legislators negotiate the 2019-2020 State budget, more elected...Read more

Today’s Read: Council Members Call for Statewide Rental Supplement Program

On Wednesday, February 13, 2019, Coalition for the Homeless rallied...Read more

Today’s Read: Bipartisan Group of Elected Officials Calls for New Program to Fight Homelessness

With record homelessness across the state, elected officials from both...Read more